The Best Build of Path of Exile 2.6: HoWa CI Spectral Throw

It has been almost three months in Legacy League. Legacy items were discovered, 6l’d and vaaled. Many souls cried at the number of accidentally-divined Legacy Kaom’s hearts on Poe.trade. However, Legacy League is not over yet. There is still a solid 1.5 months left in the league due to the extension GGG recently announced. Therefore, we will be going over a very special build today: HoWa.

Intelligence

This build utilized the full power of intelligence using a key unique: Hand of Wisdom and Action. Intelligence innately gives 1% increased energy shield per 5 intelligence while Hand of Wisdom and Action adds 1-6 lightning damage per 10 intelligence. Using this, HoWa builds stacked high amounts of intelligence (1000+) to gain 100-150% increased energy shield from their intelligence alone while making their claw into a 1000 DPS weapon of death which is something even two-handed mirrored physical weapons can’t match. Using intelligence, this build easily achieved 8-12k energy shield and allowed it to put most of its nodes into damage scaling. This scaling allowed this build to achieve over 50k GMP spectral throw DPS easily and over 600k when min-maxed which is almost as much as mirrored weapons.

Why Spectral Throw

Many people question Spectral Throw. It has a pretty big damage downside and it hasn’t been popular since the days of Low Life Spectral Throw back in 1.1. The best answer is that it is only ranged skill that uses a melee weapon and clears fast. Being ranged has obvious defensive advantages. Spectral Throw can take these advantages and add them to HoWa. Additionally, Spectral Throw is probably the fastest clearing pure melee skill due to GMP. GMP gives it 4 additional projectiles to make 5 total which basically makes it an AoE attack because projectiles always pierce. One last thing to consider is that the projectiles move back to you which means that they can deal damage twice to a monster effectively doubling their damage. This works splendidly for boss-killing and is one of the reasons Spectral Throw was one of the best builds in 1.1 when Uber Atziri was all the rage.

Why CI (and not Low-Life)

Almost all HoWa builds go CI for the best mixture of defense and damage, but why? The answer is very simple. Low Life doesn’t-provide enough energy shield. CI provides that huge 15% More energy shield node behind it. Low life provides more damage through auras at the cost of energy shield (Pain Attunement doesn’t work with Crown of Eyes since the nerf). However, Low Life would have to compensate and make up that lost energy shield by either using a shield or taking more energy shield nodes. Taking more energy shield nodes is obviously not optimal as HoWa would be losing damage.

Using a shield isn’t optimal either, and here’s the reason why. First of all, dual wielding has two benefits that affect HoWa. 15% More attack speed and 15% additional block chance. Second of all, you can pick up dual wielding nodes from the tree making it easier to gain damage and allowing you to spend less nodes on pathing. The third and final reason is the greatest of all. HoWa provides 8-12% increased dexterity and intelligence. This is an absolutely massive damage boost, something greater than anything you could achieve from Low Life. Combined with the increased WED HoWa provides, it makes it BiS to be dual-wielding them.